


instead she'll have the coolest scar I bet

by possibilityleft



Category: Bob's Burgers (Cartoon)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-08-15
Updated: 2014-08-15
Packaged: 2018-02-13 05:25:21
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,348
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2138634
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/possibilityleft/pseuds/possibilityleft
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Tina is lying on the floor of the restaurant kitchen, and this time it might be serious.  (Well, as much as the Belchers ever are, anyway.)  <em>"Is this about a boy?" Bob asked. He wasn't very good at guessing games. He and Linda had applied to be on couple's Jeopardy once but they hadn't made it to the third round of auditions. Plus, he was never quite sure about Tina nowadays, ever since this nebulous puberty thing had started. He wished Linda were here, but she had taken Gene to buy shoes.</em></p>
            </blockquote>





	instead she'll have the coolest scar I bet

**Author's Note:**

  * For [serenyty](https://archiveofourown.org/users/serenyty/gifts).



It was the Tuesday before school started, 2pm on a quiet afternoon, when Tina lay down on the kitchen floor and moaned. Bob stepped around her to flip a couple of burgers, since she had been minding the grill, and when he determined they were fine he looked down at his daughter. This was not an unprecedented move of hers, although every time he hoped she would grow it of it. Although Linda mopped with bleach every night, the floor was still always sticky.

"What's wrong?" he asked. Tina threw her arm up over her eyes.

"Everything hurts," she answered, without elaborating.

Bob considered. "You don't want to go back to school tomorrow?"

"School is fine," Tina answered, slightly muffled by her arm on her face. 

"Is this about a boy?" Bob asked. He wasn't very good at guessing games. He and Linda had applied to be on couple's Jeopardy once but they hadn't made it to the third round of auditions. Plus, he was never quite sure about Tina nowadays, ever since this nebulous puberty thing had started. He wished Linda were here, but she had taken Gene to buy shoes.

"No," Tina said, "it's not my heart that's hurting. It's my whole body." She moaned again.

Bob looked out on the mostly empty restaurant and then turned the grill off. He crouched down next to Tina, wincing as his knees protested the motion.

"Are you on...," he said, lowering his voice, "your period? Is that it?"

Louise chose that moment to make her entrance. She screeched out into the restaurant, "Tina is bleeding from all her organs!" But she refused to come any closer than the door in case she caught it.

Bob put the palm of his hand over his face, fighting irritation. "No, Louise, that's not how that works--" he began, slowly getting back to his feet with liberal assistance from the countertop.

"Bleeding?" Teddy said from his usual stool. Bob hadn't even noticed him coming in.

"No, Dad!" Tina yelled, sitting up and clutching her stomach. The back door opened and Gene came in, holding a pair of shopping bags.

"It's not that, if that's what your period is like then no woman would be able to get out of bed once a month!" Tina finished.

"Preach it," Gene said, throwing his bags down by the door and hanging back with Louise. "What are we talking about?" he whispered to her, loudly.

Finally Linda appeared in the doorway and Bob breathed a sigh of relief. Tina moaned again. Linda took one look at her daughter, who was by now propped up on one elbow on the floor, and she started clucking.

"Come on, sweetie. Momma knows exactly what you need. We have Midol and a hot water bottle upstairs, come on."

"I'm not surfing the crimson tide," Tina protested, but Linda pulled Tina to her feet and headed for the stairs, chattering the whole way. 

"That sounds like fun," Gene said.

"Oh, girl stuff," Teddy said from his vantage point. "Stay far out of the way, Bob. Let them do their special rituals."

"What?" Bob said as Louise began to root through the shopping bags. "Never mind," he continued, sighing. "Do you want another burger or not, Teddy?"

"I guess," Teddy said, and Bob turned the oven back on.

*

It was quiet until the dinner rush. Bob counted five new faces in the crowd, good sign. He even got Gene to put on an apron and deliver food for a while. Louise had disappeared to parts unknown while he was busy. He hoped she'd gone upstairs.

He was emptying the grease trap around eight when Linda came back downstairs. She looked worried.

"How is Tina feeling?" he asked, scraping and trying to ignore the smell.

"Not good," Linda said. "I parked her in front of the tv with some ice cream and good old Mr. Waterbag but she still says she isn't feeling good. And she swears she isn't having her monthly visitor."

No one was around to do battle with the euphemism so Bob wrinkled his forehead. "Should we take her to the ER?"

In his head he was considering the books and the cash receipts from today and how much money he could get from selling a little blood. It'd be worth it. Linda sighed and hugged him. He knew she was doing her own mental calculations. She smiled at him a little.

"We were only two days late last month to Mr. Fischoeder," she said. "Practically on time. I think we'd better."

"Okay," Bob said. "I'll get the car."

Gayle couldn't babysit on such short notice. When Linda called, Gayle said she was in Borneo finding herself. Everyone piled into the car.

"I'm pretty sure she's just in the international section of the supermarket," Linda said, "because she was getting pretty good reception."

Tina moaned again and Louise scooted closer to Gene.

"We can do this as a family," Bob said, despite all evidence to the contrary. "It might be kind of fun going back to the ER. We haven't seen Nurse Singh for a while."

Gene growled. "She is not nice!"

"Let's just not bug all the other patients this time," Linda reminded as they pulled up. Bob let Tina lean on him as she got out of the car. She had a blanket around her neck and made it seem heavy.

They had to wait three hours, sitting in the little hard chairs. Louise sneaked off after the first twenty minutes and they found her later in the geriatrics ward, trying to convince an older woman that she had a granddaughter she'd forgotten about. Gene made friends with a man who had managed to staple his fingers together. Linda held Tina's hand and made up a song about her recovery, which she soon taught to half the other patients.

"Tina! Gonna make you better! Tina! Won't have to wear a sweater-- to cover up disfigurement!" Linda trilled. Bob tapped his foot. It was kind of catchy.

The doctor did a quick examination and told them Tina had appendicitis. There went the family vacation they'd been planning for three years from now, but no one much cared. Tina insisted that Louise take down her desired gravestone inscription.

"It's a very safe and common surgery," Doctor Brown told Tina. Tina moaned.

"I've never had it before," she told the doctor. Then she looked up at her father. "Tell Jimmy Junior I'll always love him," she said.

"I won't," Bob answered uncomfortably .

"You can't refuse my last request!" she shouted as they wheeled her away.

Tina emerged from her surgery without any complications. Under the edge of the bed, Louise handed Gene five dollars.

"Congratulations on not splitting open like a melon," she said to Tina.

"Thanks," Tina said. Linda stroked her hair.

"My big strong girl," she said. "The doctor said you can go home tomorrow."

"Did they let you see your appendix?" Gene asked. "You should keep it in a jar as a warning to your other organs!"

"You don't get to keep it," Bob said. He rubbed his eyes, which felt like he had sandpaper in them. Now that he knew Tina was okay, the tiredness was beginning to catch up with him.

"You take Gene and Louise home," Linda said. "Get some sleep. I'll stay here with Tina."

Bob agreed and went home to sleep for five glorious hours before he had to open the restaurant.

He didn't realize until Mort asked that he was humming Tina's recovery song. He told Mort the whole story.

"Good call," Mort said. "The child-sized coffins cost just as much as the adult ones." 

Bob gave him a look. "I'm glad Tina is okay," Mort amended.

"Me too," Bob said. He picked up Tina and Linda around four and he didn't complain at all when Tina came downstairs and slept on the kitchen floor because she thought the cool tile felt good on her back. He just worked around her, flipping burgers and humming off key, glad to have her back.


End file.
